Shortly after the Bali bombings (see October 12, 2002), the Washington Post will report: “US intelligence officials said they intercepted communications in late September [2002] signaling a strike on a Western tourist site. Bali was mentioned in the US intelligence report…” [Washington Post, 10/15/2002] In response to the Post story, the State Department will issue a statement saying they did share this information with the Australian government. The statement admits their warning discussed tourists as potential targets, but says the warning did no specify an attack on Bali on the weekend that it took place. No government urgently warns tourists to stay away from likely targets in Bali before the bombings. Australian Prime Minister John Howard will later admit that Australia received this warning, but he will claim his intelligence agency analyzed it and decided no upgrade in alert status or any special warning was warranted. [Age (Melbourne), 10/17/2002]
Late September 2002: US Intelligence Plants Moles Inside ‘Al-Qaeda’s Bank’
According to author Ron Suskind, after 9/11, US officials from various agencies decide that a man named Pacha Wazir from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is the main money-handler for al-Qaeda. Wazir runs a chain of hawalas from South Asia to Europe. An FBI team led by Dennis Lormel determines that Wazir handled $67 million in assets for al-Qaeda over a two-year period. But since hawalas leave little to no financial trial, prosecution would be very difficult. [Suskind, 2006, pp. 142-146] In late September 2002, the UAE government freezes millions of dollars of Wazir’s assets and tells him that he is under investigation by the FBI. Wazir asks to meet with the FBI to convince them he is innocent. The FBI had already been preparing to apprehend him and now they put their plan in motion. Wazir is arrested by the CIA while on his way to meet with the FBI. His accounts are frozen and he is taken to a facility somewhere in the UAE for interrogation. But Wazir does not reveal anything useful. His brother is then apprehended in a similar manner, but he does not talk either. Several days later, two of Wazir’s employees operating a store in Karachi, Pakistan, are also apprehended on their way home from work. That night, they are interrogated but refuse to talk. The next morning, the store opens as usual, but the two men are replaced by CIA agents of Pakistani descent who have been specially trained for such an occasion. Pretending to be distant cousins of Wazir temporarily filling in for the other two, they continue to run the store. According to Suskind, “Over the coming months, dozens of key captures in Pakistan and elsewhere would be made because the CIA had taken up residence inside al-Qaeda’s bank.” Wazir and the other three men are rendered to a CIA black site and their fate since is unknown. [Suskind, 2006, pp. 159-161]
September 30, 2002: No Plea Bargain Sought in Case Against Moussaoui
Seymour Hersh of New Yorker magazine reveals that, despite a weak case against Zacarias Moussaoui, no federal prosecutor has discussed a plea bargain with him since he was indicted in November 2001. Hersh reports that “Moussaoui’s lawyers, and some FBI officials, remain bewildered at the government’s failure to pursue a plea bargain.” Says a federal public defender, “I’ve never been in a conspiracy case where the government wasn’t interested in knowing if the defendant had any information—to see if there wasn’t more to the conspiracy.” Apparently a plea bargain isn’t being considered because Attorney General Ashcroft wants nothing less than the death penalty for Moussaoui. One former CIA official claims, “They cast a wide net and [Moussaoui] happened to be a little fish who got caught up in it. They know it now. And nobody will back off.” A legal expert says, “It appears that Moussaoui is not competent to represent himself, because he doesn’t seem to understand the fundamentals of the charges against him, but I am starting to feel that the rest of us are crazier… we may let this man talk himself to death to soothe our sense of vulnerability.”
[New Yorker, 9/30/2002]
October 2002: State Department Restarts Propaganda Activities
The State Department’s propaganda office, closed in 1996, is reopened. Called the Counter-Disinformation/Misinformation Team, this office supposedly only aims its propaganda overseas to counter propaganda from other countries. [Associated Press, 3/10/2003]
October 2002: British Counterterrorism Officials Discuss Possible Terrorist Attack against London Underground
Following the discovery of poison recipes during a series of raids on Islamist extremist fundraising networks (see September 26, 2002), British authorities hold a summit to discuss the problem of a potential terrorist attack by Islamist extremists. The meeting is attended by 200 officials from the security and intelligence services, senior civil servants, and key personnel in the transport industry, especially the London Underground. One of the possible scenarios outlined is an attack on the Underground using poison gas. [O’Neill and McGrory, 2006, pp. 239]
October 2002: Former CIA Official Says CIA Analysts Are Upset About Use of Cooked Intelligence
Vincent Cannistraro, former head of the CIA’s Counter Terrorism Center, says, “Basically, cooked information is working its way into high-level pronouncements and there’s a lot of unhappiness about it in intelligence, especially among analysts at the CIA.” [Sydney Morning Herald, 10/10/2002]
October 2002: FBI Inexplicably Fails to Detain Imam Al-Awlaki Linked to 9/11 Hijackers, Lets Him Leave US
Shortly after 9/11, the FBI begins to suspect that Anwar al-Awlaki, an imam to several of the 9/11 hijackers, may have had some connection to the 9/11 plot. They interview him repeatedly, but cannot find enough evidence to charge him, and he cannot be deported since he is a US citizen. Investigators discover he had been arrested more than once for soliciting prostitutes. They learn he is consorting with prostitutes in Virginia, and contemplate jailing him on an obscure law against transporting prostitutes across state lines. However, this plan collapses when he leaves the US unexpectedly in March 2002. [US News and World Report, 6/13/2004] But on October 10, 2002, he makes a surprise return to the US. His name is on a terrorist watch list and he is detained when his plane lands in New York City. Customs agents notify the FBI, but they are told that his name was taken off the watch list just the day before. He is released after only three hours. It has not been explained why he name was taken off the list. Throughout 2002, al-Awlaki is also the subject of an active Customs investigation into money laundering called Operation Greenquest, but he is not arrested for this either, or for the earlier contemplated prostitution charges. [WorldNetDaily, 8/16/2003] At the time, the FBI is fighting Greenquest, and Customs officials will later accuse the FBI of sabotaging Greenquest investigations (see After March 20, 2002-Early 2003). While in the US, al-Awlaki visits the Fairfax, Virginia, home of Ali al Timimi, the leader of a nearby Islamic center. According to a later court filing, al-Awlaki attempts to get al Timimi to discuss the recruitment of young Muslims for militant causes, but al Timimi does not show interest. Al Timimi will later be sentenced to life in prison in the US for inciting young Muslims to fight in Afghanistan shortly after 9/11. [Washington Post, 2/27/2008] Al-Awlaki then leaves the US again. The FBI will later admit they were “very interested” in al-Awlaki and yet failed to stop him from leaving the country. One FBI source says, “We don’t know how he got out.” [US News and World Report, 6/13/2004] He will allegedly take part in other militant attacks (see September 15, 2006). By 2008, US intelligence will conclude that he is linked to al-Qaeda (see February 27, 2008).
October 2002-October 2005: NIST Tries to Estimate Speed of Aircraft Impacting WTC
One of the key variables in the computer simulations used by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) (see (October 2002-October 2005)) to explain the WTC collapses is the speed of the aircraft that hit the towers. However, there is no consensus on how fast the planes were traveling. The first estimate was contained in an initial research paper by engineers Zdenek Bazant and Yong Zhou, who stated that the planes were traveling at 342 miles per hour. [Bazant and Zhou, 1/2002 
] However, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) report said that the plane that hit the North Tower was traveling at 470 miles per hour, whereas the plane that hit the South Tower was traveling at 590 miles per hour (see May 1, 2002). [Federal Emergency Management Agency, 5/1/2002, pp. 31] NIST initially estimates speeds of 435 miles per hour for the plane that hit the North Tower and 497 miles per hour for the plane that hit the South Tower. These estimates closely match figures produced by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which finds speeds of 429 miles per hour and 503 miles per hour for the two planes. However, NIST is dissatisfied with these results and does a second study, which finds speeds of 466 and 545 miles per hour. It then uses speeds of 472 and 570 miles per hour in its severe case model, on which its final report is based. In this model, the simulation of the planes traveling faster means greater damage to the towers’ structure, making them more unstable. [Kausel, 5/2002 ; National Institute of Standards & Technology, 9/2005, pp. 152-165 ; National Institute of Standards and Technology, 9/2005, pp. 109]
October 2002-June 2003: Spanish Police Monitor House Where Madrid Bombers Will Later Build Bombs
Nayat Fadal Mohamed is the wife of Mohamed Needl Acaid. In November 2001, Acaid was imprisoned with al-Qaeda cell leader Barakat Yarkas and others, and was charged with being a member of al-Qaeda (see November 13, 2001). With Acaid in prison, Nayat took over the management of her husband’s farm in the town of Morata, not far from Madrid. The farm is set off from the nearest road and is surrounded by a six-foot tall privacy fence and several trees. In October 2002, Mustapha Maymouni rents the house. That same month, Spanish police realize he has rented the house because they are monitoring him very closely since he is the leader of a group of suspicious Islamist militants. Like Acaid, Maymouni was a known associate of Yarkas before the November 2001 arrests. In May 2003, Maymouni returns to his home country of Morocco and is arrested there later that month for involvement in a series of bombings in Casablanca (see Late May-June 19, 2003 and May 16, 2003). After Maymouni leaves, the Morata farm house is not immediately rented again, but Maymouni’s brother-in-law Serhane Abdelmajid Fakhet has the keys to the house and uses it sometimes. He also takes over as the leader of the Maymouni’s militant group. Police will later claim that they stop monitoring the farm house after Maymouni is arrested in Morocco. On January 28, 2004, the farm house is rented again, this time to Jamal Ahmidan, a.k.a. “El Chino.” He is a member of Fakhet’s group. He signs the rental papers using a false identity. More and more members of the group begin showing up at the house. By late February 2004, the group has bought the explosives for their bomb plot and they bring the explosives to the house. They assemble the bombs there. [El Pais (Spain), 7/31/2005; EFE, 3/6/2007]
October 2002-October 2005: NIST Adjusts Input Data so Computer Simulations of WTC Result in Collapses
During the course of its three-year investigation of the World Trade Center collapses, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) performs computer simulations of the behavior of each WTC tower on 9/11. In its final report, released in October 2005 (see October 26, 2005), it will describe having determined which variables most affected the outcome of its various simulations. Then, “[f]or each of the most influential variables, a central or middle value and reasonable high and low values were identified.” However, “[u]pon a preliminary examination of the middle cases, it became clear that the towers would likely remain standing. The less severe cases were discarded after the aircraft impact results were compared to observed events. The middle cases… were discarded after the structural response analysis of major subsystems were compared to observed events.” Therefore, the “more severe case… was used for the global analysis of each tower.” But, to “the extent that the simulations deviated from the photographic evidence or eyewitness reports, the investigators adjusted the input, but only within the range of physical reality.” [National Institute of Standards and Technology, 9/2005, pp. 143-144]
